An Analysis of Syntactic and Semantic Relations between Negative Polarity Items and Negatives in Korean.

결합범주문법을 이용한 한국어 부정극어와 부정어의 통사 및 의미적 관계 분석

Negative polarity items(NPIs), which function as quantifiers are licensed in a syntactically strict way by negatives, which function as qualifiers, resulting in universal negating interpretations as pairs. We present a proposal to explain the related phenomena, in which the syntax and the semantics are closely related to each other, with Combinatory Categorial Grammar. For this purpose, we first adopt the usual approach to scrambling, but control its overgeneration with the use of markers, taking into account the complex syntactic phenomena involving NPIs and scrambling in Korean. We also propose to utilize polarity intensity as a novel feature, in order to account for the universal negating interpretations when NPIs are combined with negatives. Our proposal also explains the difference in readings when other quantifiers or qualifiers intervene the NPI and the related negatives.